IP Group

Welcome back inside our Proactive Newsroom and joining me now is Greg Smith.

He is the CEO of IP Group.

And Greg, it's good to see you.

How are you?

And I'll let you sort of share the details with the audience here because it really talks about sort of the strength of the UK spinout ecosystem.

Yeah.

So for your listeners who aren't necessarily completely familiar with IP Group, we're a listed UK FTSE 250 operation.

And most of the UK value is in the balance sheet.

Hello, you're watching Proacto.

I'm joined by Tim Sharpington, the CEO of Microbiotica, an IP group portfolio company.

Tim, very good to speak with you.

You've raised £36 million.

These are catalyzed and accentuated by trade wars [upbeat music]

Hello, you're watching Proactive.

IP Groups led an oversubscribed £4 million pre-Series A funding round into Matter Machine.

Dr Gordon Sanghera, co-founder of Oxford Nanopore Technologies, has joined Matter Machine to lead its commercialization strategy.

He joins me now.

And Professor Alan Hill, who'd developed this blood glucose stuff, managed to raise some Harvard money, and it became a spin out.

By 2005, because of the success of that, um, something significant had happened, and it was a conversation between Dave Norwood and Professor Alan Hill, which led IP to IPO, IP Group as they are today-

Oh

... putting in some money into Oxford Chemistry.

They were just completing a chemical biology breakthrough building, and that resulted in Professor Hagan Bayley, kind of the reverse of the brain drain.

Oxford graduate, had gone off to Harvard, UMass, Texas A&M, successful American academic career, but he came back.

And IP Group, as everybody knows, would incentivize IP to IP as they were then to spin companies out.

So I was like rang up and said, "There's this interesting Bioelectronic thing called Nanopore single molecule sensing and they're looking for a CEO for it.

And then off the back of that, we had the opportunity to pitch to Innovate UK to get some grant funding to start the company.

And so then with that grant in hand, with the mentor, with the industry engagement, the stakeholder conversations we had, We were well positioned then to receive an investment from IP Group.

And then really that was the sort of genesis of the company in 2016.

Can you talk a little bit about what that market discovery activity was like going out and speaking to 100 potential customers or partners or stakeholders? What was that like for you?

But my guest today is typically involved with the next stage in a tech startup's funding journey.

He's Dr. Lee Thornton, partner at IP Group, also one of the most prolific investors in science and technology-focused startups and scale-ups.

Lee, welcome to the Britchips podcast.

Thank you, Anthony.

absolute pleasure.

Absolute pleasure.

Now, Lee, what our audience might not know is that IP Group happens to be the parent company of Parkwalk Advisors.

So perhaps you could start by explaining the relationship between Parkwalk and IP Group, and in particular, where they play in terms of funding UK tech startups.